2020 in 20 Cyber Security Figures

The impact of the pandemic on businesses in facts, figures and statistic

As we enter the new year, some trends seem to carry over. That includes the pandemic of 2020, which speeded up the digital transformation of many businesses and changed the way we work. Now 43% of the workforce work remotely at least some of the time and a global market for cloud computing reached a record $266.4 billion. The departing year saw an increase in criminal activity online, however the share of IT budgets dedicated to cybersecurity grew by  up to 29%.

The ongoing change in remote working and business network security is apparent in 20 of the most intriguing industry statistics of the past year.

1. Global losses from cybercrime now total to over $1 trillion.

2. Average total cost of a data breach is $3.86 million.

3. 86% of breaches were financially motivated.

4. 63% of the incidents reported were caused by negligent employees or contractors.

5. Healthcare is the most expensive industry affected by cyber threats, with damage estimated up to $7.13 million.

6. Nine out of 10 cyber-breaches reported to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) were caused by the end-users.

7. The data breaches cost the most in the US, amounting to $8.64 million.

8. It takes on 280 days to identify and contain a breach.

9. 99% of the vulnerabilities exploited by the end of 2020 will be the ones known by security and IT professionals at the time of the incident.

10. Mean Time to Remediate vulnerability (MTTR) for internet-facing vulnerabilities is 84.59 days. 60% of breaches involved vulnerabilities for which a patch was available but not applied.

11. If a small or medium business discovers a breach instantly, it costs on average $28k, rising to $105k if undetected for more than a week. Even after an instant detection, as many as 417 records are compromised, reaching up to 70,000 if the breach is undetected for over a week.

12. The rate of discovered cyberthreats in Q2 2020 was 419 per minute, an increase of almost 12% in comparison to the previous quarter.

13. The average ransom payment rose up to $178,254 in Q2 2020, an increase of 60% to the previous quarter.

14. In a single “highly sophisticated” attack, hackers managed to access and steal the email addresses and personal travel plans of about 9 million EasyJet customers.

15. 44% of customers would stop buying from a company that fell victim to a cybercrime.

16. 70% of enterprises say cybersecurity is among the main spending trends of their IT budgets, preceded only by analytics (75%).

17. Businesses spend about $2,700 on average per full-time employee on cybersecurity, compared to $2,300 in 2019.

18. More than half (55%) of business and tech/security executives lack confidence that cyber spending is aligned to the most significant risks.

19. 64% of cybersecurity professionals report staff shortages at their own organizations.

20. An entry-level cybersecurity agent in the US can expect to earn $73,340 a year on average.

BONUS: 3 pandemic-related cybersecurity numbers

1. Because of the pandemic, half of consumers are more willing to part with their personal data if it was used for research effort or community wellness.

2. FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said they were receiving between 3,000 and 4,000 cybersecurity complaints per day, compared to 1,000 before COVID-19 took hold.

3. Nearly half of organizations (45%) have adopted a new technology or contracted with a new vendor to enable remote work due to COVID-19.

“This year has transformed how people work, rest, shop, travel and communicate. With an ever-increasing online presence and threat perimeter, cyber security will continue to be crucial in 2021 — adapting to what many have labelled as the new normal“ says Juta Gurinaviciute, the CTO at NordVPN Teams.